Video Your Vote (Just Be Aware It May Be Illegal)

Citizens to Document Their Voting Experiences From Polling Places

SAN BRUNO, CA and ARLINGTON, VA--(Marketwire - October 15, 2008) - YouTube, the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos, has partnered with PBS to empower American voters to upload their Election Day voting experiences to YouTube (http://youtube.com/videoyourvote).

The initiative educates voters on the entire process and a wide array of issues associated with voting in America, while enabling the world to watch pivotal moments in this historic election as they unfold. In the first presidential election since YouTube's inception, this program aims to gather massive amounts of polling place video, with the Channel serving as an online library for Election Day footage.

"Voters have documented each step of the 2008 election on YouTube and this phenomenon will culminate on November 4 as people head to the polls to determine the forty-fourth President of the United States," said Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics. "This partnership with PBS, an organization known for offering rich perspectives, will help voters examine all aspects of voting from the registration processes, to reforms, to technology and election administration, to the actual casting of ballots."

Source: Market Wire
Hat Tip: Beet.tv

Related: You Tube

Commentary

Be aware that some poll workers will try to interfere with you taking photographs or video at the polling places. If this happens to you, be sure you video them telling you this, and put it on you tube so the world can know, and email me a link to the video as well.

I was covering the May Primary earlier this year, and a poll worker at Cullowhee was very insistent that taking photos and video inside a polling place was illegal...and refused to allow me to hand off my camera to someone else so they could video themselves voting.

I surrepticiously took some photos anyway and left, but did not take video. None of the other polling places that day prevented me from taking photos or video.

Here are a few tips.

Here is the law relating to photographic and video activity at polling places in North Carolina:

Limited access to the voting enclosure.

§ 163‑166.3.(b) Photographing Voters Prohibited. – No person shall photograph, videotape, or otherwise record the image of any voter within the voting enclosure, except with the permission of both the voter and the chief judge of the precinct. If the voter is a candidate, only the permission of the voter is required. This subsection shall also apply to one‑stop sites under G.S. 163‑227.2. This subsection does not apply to cameras used as a regular part of the security of the facility that is a voting place or one‑stop site.
(c) Photographing Voted Ballot Prohibited. – No person shall photograph, videotape, or otherwise record the image of a voted official ballot for any purpose not otherwise permitted under law. (2001‑460, s. 3; 2005‑428, s. 1(b); 2007‑391, s. 23.)

And here is what I found on a Citizen Media website regarding North Carolina:

The North Carolina law bearing any relation to photographing or videoing around polling places is titled “Limitation on activity in the voting place and in a buffer zone around it.”
N.C.G.S.A. § 163-166.4. This law makes unlawful activities that “hinder access, harass others, distribute campaign literature, place political advertising, solicit votes, or otherwise engage in electionrelated activity in the voting place or in a buffer zone which shall be prescribed by the county board of elections around the voting place.” This law does not explicitly mention filming or photography, and these activities may be lawful so long as they are not done in a harassing manner.However, North Carolina may be particularly in flux regarding the issue of observing people at polling places. In 1998, the North Carolina Attorney General issued an advisory opinion that polling place observers appointed by political parties should not use video cameras. 1998 N.C. AG LEXIS 43, October 22, 1998.
This same opinion noted that use of video cameras by the news media was appropriate. However, this opinion was issued 8 years ago, and relies in part on statutes that are no longer law (§§ 163-135 through 163-159, labeled “General Instructions,” were repealed in 2002).According to Sec. 4.1 of the Raleigh municipal code (http://www.municode.com/Resources/gateway.asp?pid=10312&sid=33), they follow the North Carolina state voting laws with only one except relating to campaign expense regulation.

Source: Center for Citizen Media